Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Thinkin' 'bout Tom's digits

I'm working on my Toms. First, today, I went through and sillo'd yesterdays drawings, made some marks, took a couple of notes after considering John's input.

After doing this, I started looking at some Eisenberg Toms-- tracing over the hands and feet and making observations, then doing some quick little studies of the hands and feet.

Observational traces-- what makes these different? What makes them appealing?

Things to note:

The fingers are much skinnier and more articulated.

They wrinkle more and do not bulge as much, though they do thicken out from their point of origin slightly in some images (see the drawing below)

No visible claws most of the time (though I might still keep them out on the middle 2 of my Tom's poses).

Both the hands and feet are significantly more streamlined, and the bottoms of his feet are less apparent.

There is a slight indentation on the bottom of Tom's feet sometimes-- it sort of cups, but other times it a convex surface. This is interesting because it's totally cartoon logic-- it's aesthetically appealing and interesting, but feet don't work that way. I imagine it is only used to caricature a foot that is being pulled back and slightly cupped (relevant to what I'm doing).

The feet are, again, more streamlined-- the toes are much less individual, they more strictly follow the overall shape of the foot much more than I've been drawing. The foot shape isn't really a seperate shape, but rather a slightly hinged part of the foot that can only deviate from the foot shape so much. It reminds me of a sock shape-- if Tom were wearing socks with a different-colored toe part, his toes would fit in them perfectly.

Eisenberg always draws Tom's feet with an obvious heel.

So, here are some quick studies-- they aren't perfect but they helped me get acquainted with the shapes better.

I botched the hand, here-- I was confused by the contour of the middle finger. Now that I look at it, I don't think the dividing line on the fingers-shape is correct. I think I may have followed the line too far and was thrown off of the shape. I think it's a much more streamlined shape, now that I look at it.

Hmm, well, I'm learning. I'm glad I took the time to do all this. Now to draw the new stuff into my Toms...

Don't think I've forgotten about the composition image! I'm sort of going back and forth between Toms and newer studies, I guess.

This is a Study Blog

This blog is devoted to STUDIES of the traditional cartoon. Most ideas on here are not mine (characters, poses, etc.)-- this is a blog about learning new things about classic cartooning. While I am proud of my work posted here, I can't take credit for the ideas.

I owe a lot to my mentor, John K. He is a great teacher, and many of these studies also use his drawings as a starting point.